Air Force guard Michael Lyons (left) reaches out for a loose ball against San Diego State forward Alec Williams in the second half.
associated press

COLORADO SPRINGS, Colo. 
It’s official: The Aztecs are in trouble.

The basketball team that a week ago led UNLV in Las Vegas inside two minutes to go, that was threatening to crack the Top 10 of the national rankings, that had bracketologists calling it a “lock” for the NCAA Tournament, that was angling for a high seed and a geographically favorable venue, has suddenly lost two players and three straight games. And perhaps, a tiny bit of hope.

The latest: A 58-56 decision Saturday afternoon at Clune Arena to an Air Force team that fired its coach two weeks ago and entered the day 0-64 all-time against Top 20 opposition.

The Aztecs (20-6, 6-4) are technically still ranked 13th in the Associated Press poll for another day, but that is in jeopardy after also losing at home to New Mexico earlier in the week and UNLV the previous Saturday — their first three-loss skid in four seasons and 143 games.

And anyway, they have bigger concerns: Like fielding enough scholarship players to be competitive.

They started the game with eight after Jamaal Franklin, SDSU’s leading scorer and rebounder, tested his sprained ankle in warm-ups and couldn’t go. Midway through the second half, the guy who started for Franklin, Garrett Green, landed on someone’s foot and was gone too with (yes) a sprained ankle. Franklin sat on the bench with ice encasing his left ankle; Green was behind the bench with an ice bag on his right.

That left coach Steve Fisher with seven scholarship players, one of which, forward Alec Williams, had played only 24 total minutes during the conference season and not at all in the past three games.

It was even uglier on the floor.

This ugly: SDSU had won 43 straight games when holding its opponent to 60 points or less, and 34 straight when its opponent failed to shoot over 40 percent. And Air Force finished with 58 points on 34.8-percent shooting.

And won.

The Aztecs also had a 47-27 edge on the boards and a 16-0 advantage on second-chance points and took six more shots. But they had 16 turnovers, a big number in a low-possession game, and shot 34.6 percent themselves, connecting on just 3 of 16 attempts behind the three-point arc.

They made their first shot of the second half, then missed 13 in a row and went 11½ minutes without a basket. They went 18½ minutes without making a perimeter shot, from 4:12 left in the first half to 5:40 left in the game between jumpers by Chase Tapley (17 points, nine rebounds).

“It’s hard to win anywhere, especially on the road,” Fisher said before boarding a bus to the airport and an evening flight home. “And it is especially hard when you shoot it as poorly as we did. I’m sure Air Force had a lot to do with it, but we had all sorts of looks. You’ve got to be able to find a way to make them. You’ve got to find a way to make a basket.